Review

Let's get one thing straight and out in the open: Hitchcock
and Herrmann would be proud. I know that you are thinking, "Well, that's
an obvious opening, isn't it? He must have read at least one review of the
movie to come up with that one." To some degree you are correct in that
assessment, but bear with me for a few more lines.

The press has dubbed M. Night Shyamalan "the next
Hitchcock" and "the next Spielberg." Those monikers seem to
have come about from the director's clean, clear storytelling style,
distinctive atmosphere, love of sharing the common man's tale, and, above all,
infatuation with MacGuffins.

"MacGuffin" is a Hitchcockian term that describes
the red herring a director puts in front of an audience to drive the plot
forward and to keep attention away from a movie's real subject matter. Shyamalan'
The Sixth Sense famously kept our attention on the psychologist's need
to redeem himself and his relationship with the young boy so we would not
notice the obvious facts of his existence until the end. With Signs,
crop circles and their meaning keep our attention. These are obvious and have
been pointed out countless times, but I believe there is another MacGuffin most
have accepted, including you reading this review – Shyamalan, along with
composer James Newton Howard, are invoking Hitchcock and Herrmann to receive
initial praise and acceptance for emulating those masters. This clever MacGuffin
allows the fresh, new elements they incorporate to blindside the audience who
has come expecting a Hitchcockian thriller, creating even more suspense as
viewers are thrown off balance. It is easy to do what you want when people are
looking the other way.

Howard's score for Signs is his best collaboration
with Shyamalan to date. The director's recent style has been deliberate,
quiet, and creepy and the composer has supported that feel by creating
atmosphere (remember the human breaths in his Sixth Sense score?) while,
for the most part, staying out of the way. Howard's score for Signs
continues that tradition by slowly creeping under the skin, barely noticed.
Indeed, for much of the movie there is absolutely no underscoring. Yet each
time a cue appears, there is a little more motion, a little more sound,
steadily generating enough tension to power the theatre until it finally
blossoms into revelation and catharsis during the final cues, "The Hand of
Fate - Parts I and II".

The movie opens with simple title cards announcing the
production's major players. Howard's score opens with a nod to two of his
greatest influences, Ligetti and Penderecki, with strident string tone
clusters, much like the former's Atmospheres. After this 30 second
homage, one that Herrmann, who had an interest in the European texturalists,
would have appreciated, Howard launches immediately into an ascending string
figure that strikingly recalls Herrmann's work for Psycho in
instrumentation and motion. The string tone clusters are never far away, however,
and rest underneath this figuration, eventually being overtaken by brass and
percussion that sweep the ascending figure into a frenzy that eventually
ceases, rather than really ending. This short opening cue is one of the year's
most effective main titles.

Signs then moves on to the task of building up
audience expectation. Howard accomplishes this by utilizing a post-minimalist
language reminiscent of John Adams' work from the late 1970s, the period of Shaker
Loops. For example, consider the second cue, "First Crop Circles",
which establishes the movie's main theme (one I call the "fate"
theme). It is a deceptively simple theme in C, consisting of three notes and
two intervals: a tritone followed by minor second. A rest of equal value to
the notes follows the last note and the figure is then repeated, and repeated,
and repeated, and finally modulated. The continuous resolution of the tritone
is disorienting while it is comforting, a wonderful metaphor for the entire
movie. Shifting chords and tone clusters not unlike the opening one accompany
this fate theme and help shift its nebulous mood according to onscreen needs.
(Ed. - the shifting chords are reminiscent of Howard's work in Grand Canyon.)

Every other theme in the movie can be seen as an extension
of this fate theme. Listen to the beginning of "Brazilian Video".
The opening theme is the fate theme again, only with the first interval
descending and the second one remaining an ascending one. Another slight
alteration occurs when the family looks to the skies, as in "Baby Monitor".
The fate theme is opened up past a perfect fifth to encompass a major sixth,
providing a palpable feeling of airiness. "Into the Basement"
combines a variation of the fate theme with the original three-note theme over
string and trumpet tone clusters in two distinct tonalities. This combination
of two familiar thematic variations in two separate keys creates a genuinely
unsettling atmosphere out of association. Howard's incredible reliance on one
theme and its complete exploitation is one of the best examples of musical
minimalism I have heard in a movie score, yet he uses percussion to accentuate
the action and key relationships to establish tension and release so well that
it rises above any pedantic classification I could provide.

The MacGuffin seems to be working. There is a huge
temptation for me to tell you how Howard, like Herrmann, places every note so
that it perfectly complements onscreen occurrences and reflects the director's
style in every aspect; how he uses the orchestra just like Herrmann did in this
Hitchcock movie or that one. Yet I have tried to show you the ways in which
Howard is using the musical language of his era in his own unique way. The
best advice I can give you, though, is to go out, buy this score, and look past
the surface similarities to plumb its depths. Signs is certainly one of
Howard's best and one of the best this year. So go, give it a listen, and try
not to get too caught up in what Mr. Herrmann - I mean Howard - expects us to
hear.